


Sorry

by ziskandra



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Love Realisation, Sexual Assault, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:33:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25401658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziskandra/pseuds/ziskandra
Summary: In a world where Ron never returns to his friends, Harry and Hermione must navigate the events at Malfoy Manor together.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter
Comments: 7
Kudos: 59
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	Sorry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



Hermione could scarcely catch a breath between each of Bellatrix’s Cruciatus Curses, her nerves still burning in anticipation of what was to come. She was dimly aware of the pallor of her skin, the shaking of her hands, and the sheen of sweat that dripped down her face. Yet all her physical ailments were outweighed by the physiological ones, the magical ones, the memory of phantom knives that haunted her skin.

Her breath came in ragged spurts and she willed herself to do something, anything, that could interrupt what was happening to her. Bellatrix raised her wand once more and Hermione braced herself, muscles tensing and eyes flinching closed …

… but the terrible pain did not arrive.

“Greyback can have you,” Bellatrix sneered, tucking her wand back into her robes as she leered over Hermione. There was a wet whistling noise, an inhalation of breath, and something damp spattered against Hermione’s cheek.

Bellatrix had spat on her face.

“There’s no accounting for taste. Filthy Mudblood.”

As Hermione heard the woman’s receding footsteps, heels clacking against the flagstones, Hermione willed her fingers to do anything, reach for Bellatrix’s ankle, pull her down and smash her head against the ground, again and again and again if she had to, but her digits simply twitched feebly, still exhausted by the torture.

Her eyes still scrunched closed as they were, she smelt him before she saw him, the odour of an unwashed man who had been lingering in the forest for days on end in the search of his bounty. Bile and revulsion formed at the base of her throat and it was all she could do to stop herself from retching. A mere ten minutes ago, she would have done anything to have stopped Bellatrix, anything short of betraying Harry and their goals, but now she was quickly reminded there was a worse fate, a worse form of suffering for girls like her.

Her eyes flickered open with some difficulty. Her vision swam, but she could just make out the shape of the man before her. He grabbed a fistful of the front of her robes, long claw-like nails digging into her despite her layers of clothing. 

There was no curse, no incantation, but her nerves were on fire again, a sob breaking out of her despite her best wishes. “Please,” she begged, her voice sounding far away and distant, not anything like herself at all.

Greyback hoisted her roughly against the wall, knocking the wind out of her with the impact against her shoulders. “Oh,” he whispered, foul breath caressing the shell of her ear, “I intend to have my fill of you, girly.” Hermione could barely force herself to look at him but when she did, he grinned a feral smile. Up close, his teeth looked like fangs.  
  
His spare hand slid up and over the bare skin of her throat. She tried her best to repress a shudder, but her attempts were for naught. Seeing her shake in disgust only seemed to delight Greyback, and she braced herself once more in anticipation of being pierced by his sharp claws, but the weight with which he raked her neck was only enough to leave angry red lines.

For what seemed like minutes but what must have been mere moments, he held her there before loosening his grip on her. She slumped against the wall but did not fall completely. She was outside herself, watching the actions as though they were happening to someone else.

Not her.

_Not her._

Greyback pinned her against the wall, thick thighs on either side of her hips. A hand squeezed her breast but she felt numb, numb even to the points where his fingernails dug into her skin. He lowered his nose towards her hair and breathed in deeply. “You smell good enough to eat.”  
  
Hermione closed her eyes again as Greyback lowered his mouth to the crook of her shoulder with an inhuman snarl, lips curled and teeth bared.

She was sorry it had to end it like this. She was sorry she couldn’t have been more of a help with the Horcruxes. She was sorry to leave Harry, wherever they had taken him after their capture, she was even sorry about Ron, even though he had never returned after he had walked out on them all those months ago, she was sorry for her friends stuck at Hogwarts and for her parents who would never know what happened to their daughter (who would never recall they _had_ a daughter).

She was sorry she hadn’t tried harder.

She was sorry, she was sorry, she was sorry –

The pain did not come where she expected it, angry nails scoring her cheek instead of teeth sinking into flesh. A woman’s voice, distant yet close. Haughty and high. “Greyback,” Hermione heard, struggling to make out the words over the thundering of her heart. “It would not do to get blood all over the furniture.”  
  
Narcissa, she thought, for it was the only explanation that made sense. Once she managed to open her eyes again, she realised that she had been right in her assumption, and that she was bleeding. She managed to press her hand against her head wound and her fingers came away covered in thick red blood. It stung, but the pain felt so insignificant compared to everything else that had happened tonight. 

Greyback’s nostrils flared at the distraction, and Hermione could not help but feel that Narcissa’s arrival had saved her. Once Greyback had started, he was unlikely to hold back. She would be a poor recruit for his werewolf army.

Her vision tunnelled as Greyback and Narcissa discussed her fate. It was strange, Hermione thought, that it would be Voldemort’s impending arrival that had spared her from more of Greyback’s attentions.

At least if Voldemort wanted her dead, it would be quick. She hoped.

Another figure scurried into the room, but in her current condition it was too difficult for Hermione to identify them. Was it Draco, or his father? They seemed the two most likely culprits. Whoever the man was, he assisted Narcissa with carrying her body down a flight of stairs, manually at first, but then with the assistance of magic.

*

It was dark when Hermione next opened her eyes, and her first instinctive action was to hold a hand against her face. She was surprised to find her wound covered in thick bandages. She was disposable, compared to Harry. What use would there be in tending to her injuries? 

“You’re awake!” Harry’s voice exclaimed in delight by her side, reaching out with an arm to wrap it around her shoulders in a hug. She flinched away from the contact before she could help herself, and upon realising she had so, the dam holding back all her pent-up emotions collapsed.

She broke down into deep ugly sobs, the sort that reverberated from the gut and had her hiccupping, tears and snot intermingling on her face as she longed to embrace Harry as he had attempted himself, but her hands were still frozen by her sides as Harry placated her.

“Shush, shush, it’s okay,” he told her, but the platitude only made her cry all the harder. She didn’t know why she was crying, not exactly. It was obviously a reaction to everything that had happened earlier but she didn’t know what was making this so much worse than everything else she and Harry had been through together. Eventually, she managed to work through the wall of revulsion that had built up around her without her knowing and placed a hand on Harry’s knee.

She felt his fingers twitch as though he meant to take it, but he didn’t just yet. Maybe he understood what Hermione herself couldn’t quite put into words yet, but whatever the reason, Hermione appreciated both his presence and distance. Voice lowering, he asked, “What did they do to you?”  
  
Hermione sniffled as the last of the deep, angry sobs wracked her body, and she answered once she was sure she could do so without wavering. “Bellatrix wanted to know about the sword.”  
  
Harry had almost died retrieving the sword that night, from the frozen over little pond in the Forest of Dean, and it was only because Hermione had followed him that he had survived at all. Taking a deep breath, Hermione continued. “I told her it was fake.”  
  
“So that’s where Griphook went!” Hermione’s surprise must have registered despite her not saying anything, so Harry continued, “He was here, with Luna and Dean and Ollivander – they thought we were plotting together, so they decided to keep us apart…” He broke off as though a thought had just occurred to him. “Blimey, I’m surprised they put you in here with me at all. I thought You-Know-Who would be here by now.”  
  
Hermione managed the ghost of a smile. “I’m glad they did,” she said, managing to sit upright at last, although she swayed dangerously as she did so and ended up leaning against Harry, who she realised was sitting at the end of the bed. For the first few moments she still felt tense, but Harry’s body was warm and familiar and she melted against him. She trusted him.

She lov—

She shook her head so violently that Harry stared in her at alarm. Where in the world had that thought come from? Perhaps it was an after-effect of spending so much time together alone, she had never thought about him in such a way before, he had dated one of her closest friends, and yet in the dim darkness of their underground prison she mustered the courage to admit the truth, at least to herself.  
  
_She loved him._

Oblivious to Hermione’s realisation, Harry stood up from the bed with a startling speed, almost toppling Hermione over as he begun to pace the cramped quarters of their cell. Running his hands through messy black hair, he murmured to himself, “We’ve got to get out of here.”  
  
Hermione didn’t disagree with him but was aware that Harry had spent more time awake and conscious in the dungeon than she had. If he hadn’t come up with an escape plan in that time, she didn’t like their chances. Especially when neither of them had a wand.  
  
There was something else that was playing on her mind as well. Perhaps she wanted to get the memory of Greyback’s body against her own out of her head, or maybe now that she had some idea of what she felt for Harry she wanted to act upon it. She wobbled to her own feet, snapped in Harry’s direction. “Stop that.”  
  
Thankfully, mercifully, Harry came to a stop. “Sorry, Hermio—”

She cut him off. “Don’t – don’t say that. Just come here.”  
  
He responded to her beckoning without further instruction, which Hermione was grateful for. Before she lost her nerve, she reached out for him, hands cupping his face as she revelled in the heat of his body.  
  
“What—”

She silenced him with a kiss, eyes fluttering closed as she moulded her lips to his in the dim darkness of their captivity, relishing in the surprised noise Harry made in the back of his mouth as his body moved instinctively, hands lightly caressing the small of her back in a comforting gesture that still seemed to ask: _is this right? Is this enough?  
  
Yes, yes, yes,_ Hermione thought as she deepened the kiss, clinging to Harry like he was a lifeline, putting into her action all that she felt but could not express: this was not the time, nor the place, there was a war going on. Yet, for a brief fleeting moment, all she wanted to be able to do was forget.

It was Harry that eventually broke the kiss, breathing heavily as he pressed their foreheads together. For a moment it simply appeared as though he didn’t know what to say. “I liked that,” he admitted, and Hermione braced herself for the inevitable ‘but’. “We really need to get out of here.”   
  
She couldn’t help but laugh. Having prepared herself for the possibility of rejection, Harry’s response had turned out to be so perfectly _Harry._ They would get out of here, and they would fight to live another day. She had to believe in that, because the alternative was simply too dreadful to consider.  
  
Harry slid a jagged piece of glass out from his pocket. It was a piece of the mirror Sirius had given him, back in what felt like another lifetime ago.

“Right,” Hermione said in easy agreement. “When we get out of here…” She trailed off, licked her lips. Took a breath. “When we get out of here, if we see Greyback again, I’m going to make sure _he’s_ the one who’s sorry.”  
  
Opening his mouth as though to ask a question Hermione wasn’t sure she was ready to answer, they were both distracted by a sudden movement in the reflection of the mirror.

A flash of blue.


End file.
